Before I say anything else in this post-mortem, now that the personal problem is over and I can begin taking part, there one thing about all this Deanna business that needs to be explained. You see, when it became clear that she was a villain and had SOME kind of “A God Am I” agenda, she pretty much had your complete attention. This was a problem, because she was only meant to be Quixote’s villain, not a Big Bad. The main game involved the Echoes, the Cabal, etc., but because of Deanna’s own bombast, she took that spotlight and wouldn’t let go.

So it became obvious that this had to be dealt with somehow, and we decided to end her arc sooner than intended. But I still wanted to tell the whole story, so this resulted in condensing all of the remaining plot into basically an info dump. There were two oddities that resulted from this. One, the stakes got sent much higher immediately and actually made the spotlight stay on her, and two, there was insufficient time to get the point across that no part of her plan, aside from murder, was even possible. Gamble had one throwaway line, and LATER I was able to properly explain that she was just nuts and had no idea what she was talking about, but it was too late.

So to clarify, she was never a threat to the world, she was never gonna enter the void, kill Mr. A, break the fourth wall, create a world of fiction, blahblahcrazycakes. And for the record, I don’t even know what would happen if the fourth wall broke, just like she didn’t. That’s Tom’s mythos.

Anyway, ultimately the arc ended, and despite the hiccups from ending it early, ending it early took care of the larger, more important hiccup.

So, in summation, a side character distracted everyone for far too long, and it briefly messed up the flow of the game. Now, this is NOT the fault of you, the players, for “having fun wrong” or something. It’s mine. So at the end, all I can say is that I hope you were at least entertained with what I gave you.

I actually expected this to be much much longer when I started, so I guess it’s not the essay I promised. But at least I got my facts straight, and it was brief… and that’s all Don Hollenbeck would’ve asked.